Is the Bar Meeting Its Ethical Responsibilities?

Our society depends to a large extent on lawyers to assure all citizens the protection and advantages of the law. The legal profession itself ? through its largest national organization, the American Bar Association, and through most state bars which adopt or enforce disciplinary rules for lawyers ? has chosen, in the canons quoted above, to impose on itself the ethical responsibility of making competent legal services available to all those who need them. Society has accepted the profession's position, and has subjected the ethical conduct of lawyers to little government interference or supervision.